


Flowers for a ghost

by Cuits



Series: The inherent violence of the silence [2]
Category: Bodyguard (TV 2018)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Character Death Fix, F/M, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-01
Updated: 2018-10-01
Packaged: 2019-07-23 05:49:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,653
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16152893
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cuits/pseuds/Cuits
Summary: He can’t quite shake the thought that his ex-wife never seemed to want him at his worst. He tried to convince himself that back then, in the state he was, nobody could ever really want him, except——except someone did. Julia did. And he always comes back to that one thought.





	Flowers for a ghost

**Author's Note:**

> Title stolen shamelessly from Thriving Ivory

On the **first anniversary** of Julia’s death, the whole country seems to go into deep mourning all over again. Every time he turns on the TV, everywhere he looks, he sees her image, stoic and brave and _wrong_ , just as she was, and then people compliment the person she was using all the wrong adjectives. Words like delicate, and nurturing, and deeply generous, and David has to turn off the TV or look elsewhere so to not to start to yell.

 

He has been on therapy for almost a year but sometimes, he still feels like the world is too small for him to be able to breath. He still feels like the other shoe is about to drop, like his skin is too tight.

 

He waits a week and then he waits four days more and then goes to visit her tomb for the first time. There are stravagant arrangements of flowers already going to waste and an assortment of trinkets and messages that David has trouble reconciling with the vile comments people used to throw at her when she was alive.

 

He doesn’t bring flowers or little stuffed animals or anything really, but himself, reads the words on the tombstone once, twice, thrice but their meaning doesn’t really register. His therapist insists that he is having trouble accepting Julia’s passing, something to do with being the target of the nastiest conspiration this country has ever discovered instead of dealing with her death going through the usual rites.

 

Bullshit.

 

If anything, he is still dealing with the many unresolved issues she left behind, their broken relationship among them.

 

He puts his hands in his jeans’ front pockets and kicks a rock that rolls away.

 

“I miss you,” he says so low that it is barely a whisper. His voice breaks nevertheless and he has to press his thumb and forefinger to his eyes to avoid starting to cry.

 

His therapist says that he has to cry, that is a necessary part of the process of healing, but he is afraid that if he lets himself start to cry he wouldn’t be able to stop.

 

He takes a deep, deep breath. It smells like pinecones and wet soil, simple and uncomplicated, nothing like Julia, which only convinces him further that if anything of what she was remains in this place, it is a perversion. Nothing of this suits her at all. He should say his goodbyes now but he can’t, the words get stuck in his chest and he just turns around and goes away.

 

Maybe next year he will be able to say it.

 

Maybe.

 

 

The **second anniversary** of her death is another story altogether. A brief mention of her passing two years ago in the news, a news piece about her life and her work broadcasted on a local channel at odd hours. The public isn’t interested in her anymore, her life or her death, there are more juicy details that spike their interest, like the scandals surrounding the former Prime Minister or the convoluted mechanisms to make money out of innocent people’s lives.

 

David doesn’t go to the cemetery this time, instead he goes to a pub with the honorable purpose of getting himself absolutely wasted.

 

He is less on edge these days, has stopped constantly looking over his shoulder and his sleeping patterns start to resemble those of a normal, functional person. He has been recently reinstated as PPO thanks to his favourable psychiatric report and his past service to the country. He is assigned to low risk diplomats and politicians wives, nothing big, nothing dangerous.

 

He still has some issues to work through, still goes to therapy, still has recurring dreams about Julia, about them, about how he could have saved her, saved the both of them.

 

He sits on a dark corner an orders a first pint of ale, cheers to an empty seat in front of him and drinks a heavy gulp of beer. He has set his mobile to silent. Vicky and her boyfriend has taken the children to the cinema and he won’t wellcome an interruption of his scheduled pity party.

 

There is a blonde sitting on one of the bar stools that looks at him and smiles sweetly but he barely acknowledges her before sinking further into the darkness of his spot. It reminds him of his ex-wife, a little. That sweetness, that simple innocence that once upon a time he found impossible not to fall in love with. But that was a long, long time ago, and no therapy in the world could change him back into the man he was when he was young, and fresh, and married, believing that nothing could taint their precious, edulcorated, young love.

 

David drinks and drinks until he can foul himself into hearing the soft noises of Julia’s panting in his ear when he had her against the wall. A shiver runs down his spine. He finishes what remains for his fourth pint in one gulp.

 

The blonde woman from before appears suddenly in front of him and takes the seat beside him.

 

“This is not taken, right?”

 

David doesn’t even look up to answer her.

 

“Look, I mean no disrespect but I’m not good company tonight,” his words slur enough so that there could not be a mistake about how drunk he is.

 

“That’s fine. I’m not into good company,” she practically purrs in his ear.

 

It is the wrong thing to say. He is almost out of the rabbit hole and he is not looking to get pulled into its pit again.

 

“Excuse me,” he says barely for his own ears and gets up so fast that he almost tips over the table in his way out.

 

The cool air of the night hits him straight in the face sobering him up enough to be able to focus on his watch. It’s not late enough, so he decides to walk himself home. There are a lot of memories, and ideas, and crazy dreams mixing and swirling in his hazed mind that make him mourn for a past that is still quite a mess in his brain, and miss a memory that maybe he has gotten mangled with time. But the truth is he still craves something that he can’t quite put into words.

 

  
The **third anniversary** of the bombing that took her away is not a public affair.

 

David is almost at peace with himself. He has tried dating, but everything feels shallow and foreign, and he finds it difficult to relate with people that have lead normal, uneventful lives all along.

 

He puts his energies in his job and in being the best parent he can be. His relationship with his ex-wife has become a compound of niceties, good and bad memories that don’t benefit either of them, but it’s cool and calm and the best thing for the kids.

 

Sometimes Vicky would smile in a determine way that would make him remember that he was once deeply in love with her, but he can’t touch that feeling anymore, because the next time he also remembers the exasperated sadness in her eyes whenever she looked at him, back when he returned from the war.

 

It is not fair, it is more than anyone should have any right to ask of anybody, but there is a little nagging voice at the back of his head that says: “ _If you don’t want me at my worst then…_ ”

 

He can’t quite shake the thought that his ex-wife never seemed to want him at his worst. He tried to convince himself that back then, in the state he was, nobody could ever really want him, except—

 

—except someone did. Julia did. And he always comes back to that one thought.

 

He goes to her tombstone once again, with a little bouquet of daisies that he leaves there casually, as if it bear no significance whatsoever.

 

There are weeds growing around wildly and it is obvious that nobody goes to visit her anymore.

 

David feels more acutely her absence here so he makes a pact with himself to never come back. It doesn’t make sense to keep yearning for something that it is out of his reach. He has to say goodbye and close that chapter of his life. Every therapist and every book about self-care he has ever crossed path with says so.

 

He touches the tombstone with her name engraved on it with straight-lined letters. It is cold to the touch, rough, hard.

 

“Goddamnit, Julia,” he murmurs.

 

He leaves without saying goodbye.

 

  
The **fourth anniversary** of Julia’s death is a month away when David gives in and agrees to go with Ella to Paris for a weekend. She has been begging and pestering him about a fashion exhibition she _really_ wants to go, and has even gone as far as to promise not to need any other birthday gift _ever again_ if he lets her go.

 

She is fourteen already, no longer his little baby, but she is definitely not old enough to go alone to the continent. Not by far. So he buys two train tickets to Paris, books two nights in a cheap hotel that is not entirely a hole in the wall and gets a ticket for Ella for the fashion exhibition she so desires to see.

 

He can wait for her outside, those tickets cost a fortune.

 

Ella is just exultant the whole way there, glowing. She is so happy that he can’t help but be happy by proxi.

 

They walk around Montmartre and David buys enough croissants to feed a rugby team. They eat them at the top of Le Sacre Cuore. Ella hugs him like she did when she was little and he came back home battered and bruised after a tour or after a difficult job.

 

When the time comes he leaves her at the entrance of the exhibition with precise instructions to call him if _anything_ happens, or simply as much as _anything_ bothers her.

 

“Yes, Daddy,” she says rolling her eyes.

 

“And text me when you are about to finish and I will pick you up at the exit.”

 

She waves her hand tiredly, almost dismissively but he has lived through enough shitstorms to accept her teenager scorn as an acceptable collateral for his peace of mind.

 

David strolls around the Palais Brongniart where the exhibition is located and decides that he’d rather pay a little fortune for a coffee than getting farther away from the place so he finds a little restaurant with charm, asks for a _cafe au lait_ , takes out a worn paperback novel from his backpack, and tries to relax.

 

Almost twenty minutes have passed when he looks at the locked screen of his mobile that insists on showing him absolutely no texts from his daughter, and _what the hell_ , asks for a glass of red wine. When in Rome…

 

He doesn’t finish the thought, and the half content smile on his face gets wiped off in half a second. A small group of people leaves the building in front of him, and out of the corner of his eye, there is a stance, a particular set of movements that sets an alarm in his brain.

 

He takes his backpack in a fluid movement and gets into motion without thinking it, sets a quick pace towards the building. Financial Markets Authority, says above its doors. In the time it takes him to read the three words he repeats to himself over and over again he is being completely and utterly ridiculous, yet he doesn’t stop.

 

There is a woman walking away, with long, platinum blonde hair, that walks exactly like someone he used to know, that pace and the power of her heels hitting the ground is embedded in his brain.

 

He starts a short run.

 

“Julia?!” he shouts and he feel like he is going mad just by saying that word out loud, but her step falters for just a second before she keeps going on, and that is all the excuse that he wants.

 

He grabs her by the shoulder and makes her turn around, makes her face him. The hair is wrong, and so is the makeup but everything else, every little detail of her face is exactly as he remembers.

 

“Oh my God, Julia,” he whispers without having the slightest idea of what it is happening — maybe he has already gone bonkers and he is only realizing it now.

 

The recognition in her eyes makes him stop breathing for a couple of seconds. Then she looks to one side, then the other.

 

“That is not my name,” she says loud enough for other passers-by to hear, “not anymore,” she whispers back.

 

He takes her hand, that is warm and smooth and soft, nothing like her tombstone and pulls her to him. There are like a quarter million questions pilling up in his mind but he just hugs her like he never thought he could do again as his eyes well up.

 

She smells exactly like he remembers. He sinks his nose in the crook if her neck and inhales as he embraces her so tightly that he wouldn’t be surprised if she couldn’t quite breath.

 

“David,” she whispers. The word in his ear sounds exactly like the memories in his head. “David you have to let me go,” she insists, which coincidentally is what everybody else keep telling him to do, and completely impossible.

 

“No,” he says firmly. He grabs her tighter.

 

“David, this is not safe.”

 

 _He_ doesn’t care. He _doesn’t_ care. He doesn't _care_.

 

His mobile buzzes in his pocket. _Ella_ , he thinks, so he concedes to let her go to take a look at the screen of his phone. He opens the text, which turns out to be his bank office informing him of how much his latest purchase translates from euros to pounds. When he looks up again she has stopped a taxi and is halfway inside the car. His sprint only serves him to look at her face one last time through the backseat window.

 

He gets back to the restaurant, drinks his glass of red wine and then orders a whisky double. Neat. By the time he has to pick Ella up he has convinced himself that everything has been a figment of his treacherous imagination.

 

It has to be.

 

They have crepes au chocolat for dinner and agree to walk all the way back to the hotel. The city seems different at night, darker, full of secrets.

 

David makes a conscious effort to empty his mind from his own troubles and tribulations and to make himself _present_ for Ella. She talks incessantly and excitedly about cloth and clothes and _texture_ and design and he can only nod and smile in what he hopes are all the right places.

 

It’s starting to get chilly but he welcomes the cool breeze on his face. They turn a corner and their hotel appears in their horizon, luminous among the darkness of the street.

 

“You are being weird,” Ella says.

 

“What? No,” he dismisses her. And then, “weird how?”

 

“I don’t know. You just seem... off.” She shrugs as if already bored with this line of conversation.

 

“I’m just surprised that you know so much about fashion design.”

 

She lets him pull her to his side with one arm in half a embrace but rolls her eyes as if he was embarrassing her in the most insufferable way, then she stops for a moment and frowns her nose.

 

“What?”

 

“Nothing.” But she reaches to the neck of his jacket and pulls out a long, blond hair with her thumb and her forefinger before letting the night’s wind blow it away.

 

His smile is forced and tense as they resume their slow stroll. He feels like he is on the verge of a panic attack out of some stupid hair that could belong to any woman from the subway, only it doesn’t belong to any woman in the subway or he has already lost his mind for good.

 

When they reach their destination, David opens the door to the lobby and holds it for his daughter. He puts his hand on her shoulder and the both of them walk straight to the recepcion to ask for their key. All normal, unsuspicious, but his heart rate is so fast that he is a little short of breath, like he is about to fight a battle.

 

He takes the key to their room form the concierge and gives it to Ella.

 

“Why don’t you go upstairs and call your mum? Tell her all about your day, uh? I’m going to clear the checkout for tomorrow.”

 

She takes the key and goes straight for the elevator without a second thought, eager for a little space away from his father, exactly as every teenager around the world throughout the history of humankind.

 

He saw her as soon as he set foot in the lobby, sitting in one of the sofas with uncharacteristics sneakers, hiding behind a conspicuous newspaper. The reason why cliches become cliches is because more often than not, they work. Nobody else has paid any attention to her.

 

He goes to the counter where the tourist flyers lie and pretends to check them, even grabs a couple of them for show, but as soon as she gets up and goes towards the elevator he follows her.

 

She is wearing jeans, a leather jacket over a cotton t-shirt and her hair arranged in a ponytail. She looks younger, maybe younger than him, certainly younger than he feels. He feels ancient, like a cursed greek legend.

 

He follows her into the elevator with a quarter of a million questions, half a million theories and a million doubts pilling up on his mind, all of them unimportant at the moment, all of them unprioritized as the doors close and he grabs her arm reassuring himself of her realness and her presence in his world, this world.

 

She puts her hand over his, pulls it down along her own arm until his hand is in hers and the elevator pings, warning them they have arrived to their floor.

 

Her ponytail swifts slightly from side to side as she leads the way to a hotel door and he watches it, a little mesmerized by the movement as he waits for her to swipe her card over the electronic lock.

 

David feels an unnamed emotion gaining mass and speed inside himself as they get into the room and the door closes behind them. He feels it transform into pure energy that is about to make him implode or most probably, throw up his dinner.

 

“I’m really sorry, David,” she sound cool and calm. As didactic as in one of her political speeches. Prepared.

 

He doesn’t want or need her motives and excuses right now. He puts a trembling hand on her nape and brings her to him, to his mouth, until her lips touch his and he kisses her. God, God he kisses her.

 

He remembers this, the texture of her lips and the smell of her hair. He kisses her slowly and intently, trying to make a lasting memory out of every second, aiming to state a lasting claim out if this kiss. He drowns in her because he is not näive enough not to know that as soon as this kiss is over everything will start to crumble around them, just as it did four years ago.

 

“David,” she says against his mouth a minute later, or maybe ten. “We have to talk.”

 

“My God, Julia. Do you have any idea?”

 

“I’m sorry—”

 

“No, no, I—”

 

He kisses her again, putting a halt to their broken, fragmented conversation.

 

“Listen to me, David.” She is out of breath. She grabs his head with her hands, caressing with her fingers the short hair of his temples. “You can’t look for me. It’s dangerous.”

 

“I won’t. I promise I won’t. Just tell me when and where I can see you again.”

 

They talk in whispers so that their words remain theirs alone.

 

“No. You don’t—”

 

“You owe me that much, Julia.”

 

She clenches her hands with his hair in them, the pull hard enough that it sends a shiver down his spine, she brings his head to hers, their foreheads together.

 

“Okay. Okay.” She concedes. She closes her eyes just for a moment. “But I’m serious, David, if you as much as google _Financial Markets Authority_ —”

 

“I _won't_.”

 

She nods. Once. Hugs him with surprising strength and lets him go before he can embrace her back.

 

“You have to go now. Your daughter is waiting for you.”

 

He catches her eyes for an elongated moment and reads her whole stance, the worry and the eagerness in the way she wants to crook her mouth but doesn’t.

 

David leaves the room because he knows he has to, not because he wants to. There is the familiar feeling of getting his needs adjusted to what duty demands of him, the vague outline of what could be considered the beginning of a plan to stick to.

 

He makes a mental list of what he knows and what he needs to know. Questions to ask and in what order. He walks the generic hotel hallway and stops before the door to his room. He schools his face as he had done while on a job a million times over.

 

And so he waits and carries on.

 

Nobody seems to remember anymore that Julia Montague officially died just over four years ago, while developing duties related to her role as Home Secretary. No special news segments, no public displays of grief.

 

David can still feel the heat of the explosion on his skin.

 

He goes to a meeting of his support group and talks about misplaced rage not sure if that adjective is the most adequate to describe his anger anymore. When he comes back to his place there is a envelope in his mailbox, without stamp or a recipient's address on it. He takes it inside and opens it like it could suddenly become alive and bite him.

 

It contains a single business card of a holiday house in rural north Spain with a date two months away scratched on one side. He burns the envelope and keeps the card in a crack in the back of the second drawer of the dresser, like probably no well-adjusted normal bloke would ever do.

 

He uses the two months until the designated date to make the necessary arrangements: plane tickets, at least two different rental cars from different agencies to switch on ground, and a believable story for his absence that weekend, like say, the wedding of someone from his support group with its very useful presumed anonymity.

 

He checks and re-checks, and when the day comes it takes him a whole day to get to his destination in a way he’s reasonably sure he is not being followed. His therapist says is residual paranoia due to his old PTSD, but he _has been_ at the receiving end of a conspiracy and as the say goes, fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice… He has enough guilt and shame over what happened to fill a couple of lifetimes already, he doesn’t need to keep adding up.

 

The house is stonewalled and secluded, with lots of green grass and green trees surrounding it, and absolutely no neighbours that he can spot. It is already cold and dark outside, and when he enters the house the warmth and light coming out of the fireplace are almost the first things he registers.

 

Almost but not quite. Julia is on the chaise lounge. Barefoot. Drinking a glass of red wine. Her hair seem a shade darker than the last time he saw her, or it could be simply due to the reddish illumination from the fire. She pulls her legs up.

 

David carefully lets his bag on the floor and doesn’t take any step further in.

 

“When do you have to go?” he asks, because out of the hundred questions that he could ask, that is the one that requires her immediate answer.

 

“Sunday. Late afternoon.”

 

It surprises him and it must show on his face because Julia ups her eyebrows like she means to challenge him. They have more time than he expected.

 

“All right then.”

 

He takes his jacket off, doesn’t hide his immediate intention when he lets it fall to the floor unceremoniously. He goes to the sofa and grabs her legs, unfolds them, pulls until her ass hits the edge of the cushion, then he lets her her ankles go and pulls her up to stand right in front of him. She is shorter without her shoes son.

 

Julia lets him manhandle her, he is under no illusion that this is any other than her choice.

 

“Hi,” she says, harsh and unwelcoming to the untrained ear.

 

David sneaks his arms around her waist and pulls her to him, his mouth finds hers almost immediately, like pulling a trigger when something doesn’t quite fit in, all muscle memory and instincts. Their lips and tongues frantic, licking and biting and bruising.

 

“I’ve missed you so much,” he says in shared breaths. “So much. So much.”

 

He undresses her unceremoniously, without finesse, and she lets him, she always lets him. Her clothes pull around her naked body but she is unbashful as she kisses his jaw, his throat, bites the skin over his right clavicule.

 

Her body tells a story they both know to the bone: puckered scars, healed burns. It is a miracle that her face was spared — not that it matters.

 

Her life was spared.

 

He grabs her hips, hard enough to leave bruises and pushes her so that she tumbles on the couch letting out a gasp that is neither surprised nor unwelcome.

 

This is a truth about himself that he has never told anyone: he is not a gentle soul, he has never been, unlike his children or his ex-wife or even most of his work buddies. There is a hint of violence mixed in his blood, in the methodic, stoical way in which he stands and looks for blind spots and exit routes. His silences are aggressive, and sometimes, only sometimes, pain is the thing that makes him feel really alive and connected to the world around him.

 

He never pretended to be something he is not but the way he bruises his knuckles against the punching bag in the gym goes unnoticed, the way his blood boils when he stands with his hands casually clasped on his front, how his muscles are wired and coiled. Nobody ever really saw. Until Julia.

 

He digs his fingers in the flesh of her thighs and bites ever so slightly the juncture of her leg with her hip, barely gracing his front teeth against her warm skin. She whimpers becomingly and grasps his head with both her hands, guiding him, urging him to move along but he resists, his heart stomps against his ribcage and it rattles him whole.

 

They are not cut from the same cloth but they are both forged for the battlefront, they _understand_ , the undercurrent need for _something_ that is not pretty or pure, so he feels her pulling his hair, hard enough, and something knotted and twisted get blissfully loose within himself.

 

He rubs his hands under her ass, bring her closer to him as he starts licking and sucking. Her hips jerk awkwardly. It fuels him to make her liquid heat.

 

“Oh God. I have missed you too. I have… I have—” she never finishes the thought, just breathes loudly, mumbles unintelligibly.  They never did talk much during sex anyway, too intense for coherent thoughts.

 

He brings his right hand from under her and plays with her inner thigh, his short nails drag across her skin, up and down, up and down, everytime closer to where she wants it, closer to where his mouth keeps working relentlessly.

 

Julia humps and her hips rock violently. David smiles against her. She never begs if there is absolutely another way to get what she wants, never begs unless he explicitly ask it of her.

 

He holds her steady with his left hand and put the fingers of his right hand to the task. The flat of his tongue insistent, paying platitudes to her clit as his fingers find their way within her, pushing and pulling and twisting, increasing in speed and force as Julias broken moans fill the room.

 

His mouth tastes rich and salty and his chin and fingers are almost dripping wet when her orgasm hits, clenching and pulling and rocking and calling out his name. He is still fully clothed and she is fully naked and he doesn’t find anything odd in it, anything filthy in them.

 

Julia slides from the couch to the floor beside him, like dense liquid overflowing, and kisses him deeply, their tongues slide against each other as starts to unbuckle his belt. He leans his back against the lower part of the sofa and she climbs on him, her hands between them.

 

David can’t help but look at her mesmerized, carefully putting a lock of her soft hair behind her ear as she frees him from his underwear. She is sweaty, flushed and real. He recognizes the smell of them on her skin, recognizes the way her eyes shine and her cheeks colour. She sinks into him, her arms embracing his neck and her legs around his hips and a feeling hard to explain explodes, making him high sensitive to _everything,_ stripped down of any pretense and just raw.

 

She sucks on his earlobe and then _bites_. The pain becomes something else as a shiver runs down his back.

 

“I—” she rocks her hips harder, faster, runs her nails across his scalp, pinches his nipple as she pants with her mouth open over his own open mouth. He comes so hard that everything is bright for a few seconds before he becomes boneless and spent.

 

She lets her breathless self lean heavily against him and they both come to a tangle of limbs as they lie on the wooden floor.

 

He is still pretty much clothed.

 

He closes his eyes as he catches his breath, trying very hard not to fall asleep, and searches blindly for her hand, intertwining their fingers.

 

“I was in a coma for six months,” she says. She sounds stern, convinced of her truth even if nobody wants to hear it from her lips. “When I woke up in a facility in Germany I had already been officially dead for some months.”

 

David opens his eyes to look at her. She is somehow unwavering and apologetic at the same time. He brings up her knuckles to his mouth and kisses them softly.

 

“I made powerful enemies as Home Secretary, but I also made powerful friends. I was taken care of. Given a new identity, a new job—”

 

“A new hair color,” he interrupts. Smiles.

 

Julia chuckles, a single tear that she promptly catches, rolls down her cheek as she does.

 

“At least they let me choose the color,” she says humourless.

 

“You could have—”

 

“No, no I couldn’t.” She smiles sadly. There is a softness to her assertiveness that nobody seemed to ever care about but himself. “You have a family, David, and I can’t set foot on English soil.”

 

“Okay.” He doesn’t need the lengthy, complex explanation. He understands. He brings her head to him and kisses the top of her hair. “Okay.”

 

They spend most of the time under the sheets, talking in hushed words. He tells her about the therapy, about his children and keeps quiet about the holes in his life shaped after her and she speaks of the inconsequential details of living in Paris, of hiding from the spotlight that she so carefully had builded for herself.

 

They share warmth and caress each other’s scars, and have sex. Coming out from under the illusionary protection of white linen only when necessary.

 

They put on some thick socks and warm clothes and go to the kitchen to have some breakfast at twelve pm. Julia sits on the counter, as he slices fruit, stealing some pieces before even make the plate.

 

“So what’s the plan?” he asks casually.

 

“There is no plan.”

 

She sounds adamant. He doesn’t care.

 

“Then let's make one.”

 

“No. It’s not safe.”

 

“Nobody is looking for you or me anymore. It’s been five years. Let’s make a plan.”

“There is no way it could work.”

 

“I don’t accept that.”

 

Julia makes a face, cocks her head and puts her hand on his jaw, caressing his cheek with her thumb.

 

“There is not a happy ending for you and me, David. There is only… this,” she motions around them, with a resolute demeanor and David knows she had already thought about it and come to a conclusion. “A weekend here and there, just the scraps of a life.”

 

“I’ll take it.” It has been five years of learning how to cope and carry on, he will take any alternative to her being dead without a second thought. Julia is silent for a few seconds, as if giving him some quietness to think would make change his mind. “You said it yourself, that this was our choice.”

 

She shakes her head sadly kisses him chastely on the lips. “I was wrong, it never was.”

 

“Maybe not back then, but it is now.”

 

It takes her a couple of long, long, seconds but she nods once, more to herself than for his benefit. She smiles and it takes him back to adjoining hotel rooms with open communicating doors and long hallways with her right behind him.

 

“Okay. Let’s make a plan.”


End file.
